Black Healer 007 – Deep into the Forest

TN: Happy holidays and happy new year everyone! Hope you will all have a great 2017 🙂

In order to not get lost, I traveled by following the cart tracks.
If any monsters appeared on the way, I fought them.

After getting in so many battles, I noticed a couple things.
First of all, even though my spells mostly looked the same, they had different effects and MP (Mana) costs.

For example, [Blaze].
When I cast the spell, it creates a ball of fire, but by carefully thinking “I want it to be about this many, this big”, the power and MP cost would change. So something like “1 golf ball sized one, or 5 soccer ball sized ones”.

So basically the magic is like, “it feels kinda like this magic”, where you first think of what the spell should look like before using the incantation as a sort of trigger to cast it.
So the spells aren’t based so much on the actual incantation as they are on your image of the spell.
If you don’t have a strong image of the spell, then it’ll just collapse.

When I was attacked by 3 dog-like monsters, they approached me while growling and baring their fangs, so I scurried away, and because I was scared I couldn’t focus enough to cast a spell.
Anyways I got really tired so I feel asleep but it was like, “If you sleep you’re gonna be screwed!!” so I woke up suddenly after being found and shouted [Heal!].
Well it turns out heal doesn’t do anything against monsters, so then I shouted [Snooze] and the 3 dogs and a Goron fell asleep, to which I let out a dry laugh. (TN: Heal and Snooze here are written as Hoimi and Rariho- which are Dragon Quest spells according to Google. Goron might mean Golem but I’m not sure, Goron is something from Dragon Quest too.)

Because it seems like magic can do whatever you want as long as you visualize it well enough.

Seriously, I’m so grateful for my otaku life and chuunibyou up until now.
Thank you anime and RPGs! I’m glad that I know plenty of spells.

Also, and this is thanks to games as well, but after a battle in a game, even if you use super powerful flame spells, or use a giant meteor to destroy your enemies, or summon a Titan to tear up the earth, or a Leviathan to flood the area, at the end of the fight the battlefield goes back to normal.

With that image in mind, I managed to control the environmental damage of my spells, so that even with a burst of fire I wouldn’t burn any trees.
The only scorched areas nearby were from my first attempts to cast [Blaze].
At that time I didn’t understand how to properly cast a spell, and didn’t have a good image in mind, so I totally roasted the ground.

It was seriously convenient. Because magic seemed to be to be amazing.
No matter what, as long as you have a strong imagination you can win.
Viva my otaku life! I’m so happy to have indulged in fantasies for so long.

And finally, there was one more thing I noticed.
It’s easy enough to cast a spell when I can visualize it, but if I can’t imagine it, then the spell won’t work.

The monsters I attacked fought back viciously with anger, so if I had to cast a second spell it was while running away, and it was much harder to cast a spell in a hurry like that.

Looking at the status bar those monsters have way less HP than me, but it’s my life at risk so seeing those fangs coming at me is seriously scary.

Anyways, that’s why I tried to take everything down in one hit.
Preemptive strikes and one-hit KOs.
For a city-dwelling weakling like me, there’s no other way to stay alive.

Preemptive strikes and one-hit KOs.

With that goal in mind, it turned out that it wasn’t magic that was most useful to me, but skills.
The skills I had learned were [Search] and [Stealth].

I got the [Search] skill pretty quickly.
I heard some rustling in a bush and stood still listening, when suddenly in my ears I heard a “ping!”, and

– [Search] Skill Acquired –

appeared in front of my eyes.

When using [Search], I can hear kind of an alarm when a monster sees me, and I can see markers pointing to nearby enemies.
By looking at a marker for a little longer, I can see specific status information about the monster.
If a monster goes into battle mode, then the marker turns from yellow to red.
Basically, the yellow marker monsters are non-aggro, and the red marker monsters are aggro.

When I first got the skill, it could only detect within a 1 meter range, but as I continued using it and understanding how it worked, it grew in range and by evening it had about a 10 meter range.

[Stealth] was also easy to get.

I wanted to rest a bit, so I found a rock that was about as high as my waist and climbed on top to take a break, when suddenly I noticed a giant snake slithering nearby.
I thought “uwaaa I’m scared” and laid absolutely still, hoping it would just pass by, and that’s when I got [Stealth].

[Stealth] doesn’t only make you invisible, but also seems to conceal temperature and smell.
Although as expected it doesn’t hide sounds, so I still have to be careful about my footsteps.

By constantly using [Search] and [Stealth], it became much less common for monsters to catch sight of me first.
After seeing them first, I could just keep a safe distance and fire off some magic at them.

If it looked like I could pass by peacefully, then I’d be on my way, and if it looked like it was about to turn into a battle, then I would have a spell ready to cast the instant the marker turned red.

Anyways, it seemed that my “tofu mind” had mostly disappeared, and I wasn’t caught in so many life-threatening situations anymore as I safely continued my journey through the forest.

It’s a pretty nice chapter, even if not much happens. There’s exposition by way of watching the MC learn how the world works, eh? And we get accustomed to her hearing her inner voice, which is pleasant to “listen” to. Thanks for returning to this!